Editing The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy) (section)

==Technology==
Of all the Human Civilizations that get their own army books in WFB the Empire is by far the most technologically advanced. They have muskets and cannons a plenty, the odd rifles, the a few steam powered tank and some down right steampunk things like mechanical horses. If they could only figure out the McCormick Reaper, Bessemer Converter, Spinning Jenny,Flying Shuttle, Gatling guns and rifle muskets they would be taking over the world in a few decades. Most of their technological marvels comes out of the city of Nuln.

The only civilizations which have them beat technologically are the Dwarves and Chaos Dwarves, the former being hindered only by old tradition and superstition, and the latter hindered by directly eschewing those two ideals and being few in number. Odd ones out are the Skaven who despite commonly employing genetic manipulation, bionic implants, chemical weapons, and laser-guided missiles, have such a high tendency to blow up themselves and their society that they're no real threat to the world...ya, if you're in front of them you're screwed but generally they can never get the Empire because they'd just kill each other first. These few may have the Empire beat, but the Humans advance steadily and avoids the trap of [[Medieval Stasis]] that so many other fantasy kingdoms/settings fall into.

Well for the most part at least. A few of their books such as Iron Company's paints a very adversarial relation between them and their own technology, or to be more accurate, the common men and priests and their technology, [[Adeptus Mechanicus|and their own engineers mystifying the whole thing likely does not help]]. A simple smooth bore cannon is seen the same way we view cyberpunk Artificial Intelligence's - unnatural and useful perhaps, but something to be ill trusted and carefully watched over. Considering the Empire is at a 16 or 17th century tech level (roughly), and it was not until the late 1800 that we figured out how to make a cannon that was fairly likely to not blow up after repeated firings, they may have a point. Remember: the black powder mishap table is historically accurate.

Make no mistake, The Empire is moving forward, but if we compare their technology to our own development there are some major discrepancies. They seem more ignorant and less learned than a culture with the printing press should be. They have the technology, but the constant threat of outside attacks has made them much more suspicious of ANYTHING that goes outside their day to day understanding, and that this more than anything else kills their rate of progression.

Example: lightning hits house, we would ask "Does it strike some houses more often than others?" an Empire citizen would say "A witch have smitten thee" and half the time, they would be right. A lot of scientific methods and formulas have to be thrown out when supernatural powers such as magic (and the existence of gods is a known fact rather than [[Skub|a heavily debated matter]]) do indeed exist and can twist lots of fundamental forces, and scientific advancement as a whole can easily be torpedoed when one of the Chaos Gods decides to turn the laws of physics inside out on a whim.

When the rules behind the universe cannot be examined without going mad or worse, technological development slows to a crawl out of simple self preservation since you don't know what force behind the universe you may find with your study. Just like the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]], but with less machine worship and no STCs to fall back on.